The findings were published online in Cancer Research
Scientists in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have developed a new vaccine to treat cancer at the pre-clinical level. The research team led by Professor Kingston Mills, Professor of Experimental Immunology at Trinity College Dublin discovered a new approach for treating the disease based on manipulating the immune response to malignant tumours. The discovery has been patented and there are plans to develop the vaccine for clinical use for cancer patients.
The first cancer vaccine Sipuleucel-T (Provenge-) was licensed last year for use in prostate cancer patients unresponsive to hormone treatment. Unfortunately, this cell based vaccine only improves patient survival by an average of 4.1 months. Vaccines for infectious diseases are highly effective at generating immune responses that prevent infection with bacteria or viruses. The immune system can also protect us against tumours and in theory a vaccine approach should be effective against cancer. In practice this has proven very difficult because unlike infectious diseases, tumours are derived from normal human cells, and not made up of foreign substances or antigens capable of triggering an immune response. The tumours instead produce molecules that suppress the efficacy of the immune system. They generate regulatory cells that inhibit the immune response that could potentially clear the tumours.